Riga Economic Forum organizers cancel invitation of Paul Krugman

17.05.2013, 09:24

Nobel Prize winner in Economics, Princeton University Professor Paul Krugman will not participate in the First Riga Economic Forum due to the controversy that his invitation to the forum has caused in Latvia, reported the Baltic Course.

The forum will be held from July 24 to July 26, and Krugman confirmed his participation, however, forum organizers have decided to cancel his invite.

Pavel Morozov, one of the organizers, said in comment: "Invitation of professor Krugman to the First Riga Economic Forum caused unexpected political resonance: decision-making on Latvia joining the eurozone that should be announced approximately in the same terms as our forum, as well as disagreements due to statements of the professor Krugman politicize too much our event."

Krugman is known in Latvia for criticizing the way Latvia exited the crisis. He has said several times that devaluing the national currency would have been the best way to battle the crisis in Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia.

Krugman says the Latvian government's austerity measures resulted in a major decrease in the gross domestic product, and notes that Latvia's economic growth has still not returned to the pre-crisis level.

The pursuit of the truth should trump groupthink. The austerity pursued at present in countries such as Britain will in the years to come be seen as blinkered and an echo of the errors made back in the 1930s. The withdrawal of one respected academic's invitation to a public forum, in this case Paul Krugman's, is to be lamented. It shows the world that public debate in Latvia is not free or robust enough to include all points of view, particularly those that contradict the current orthodoxy - and therefore serious decision economic making is weaker as a result. This smacks of the kind of autocratic paternalism that was present in Latvia during Ulmanis's regime - back in the 1930s. Ta gan nejadzetu notikt Latvija.